…and Other Unlikely Places

Professor Jerry Lewis (Actors)

“There were times when [actors] went off somewhere and I’d look them in the eyes and they’re not looking at me. They’re pointing their eyes at me, but they’re looking at a broad over there or a guy over there. They wouldn’t listen. And I finally gave them one shot on the behind and they were very good after that. So it was just a gag, but it worked for me.”
Director Jerry Lewis on using “The Not Listening Stick”

Jerry Lewis directing with “The Not Listening Stick”

“Actors are a strange breed of people. They are all nine years old. They stop at nine. If you want to attempt to un­derstand actors, read a quote from Moss Hart’s Act One: ‘The theatre is an inevitable refuge of the unhappy child, and the tantrums and childishness of theatre people are not either accidental nor a necessary weapon of their profession. It has nothing to do with so-called ‘artistic temper­ament.’ The explanation, I think, is a far simpler one. For the most part, they are impaled in childhood like a fly in amber.’

Locked like flies in their million-year-old amber, they are all different, wearing different costumes, giving dif­ferent portrayals at different times, yet basically they are all alike-nine-year-old children.

Speaking now as an actor: tremendous ego is involved and we tend to believe that whatever weaknesses we have are justification for our neuroses. That’s childlike. If the actor were truly adult, in that strict sense of definition, he could not act. He’s standing up there because of needs. He must express himself, be heard.

A director, whether he’s a Wyler or a student film­ maker, cannot run on to the set and yell, ‘Hey, watch me, I’m going to show off.’ That is what actors do. That is the actors need. He’s built that way.”Writer/director (and one time USC professor) Jerry LewisThe Total Film-Maker (1971)

At the end of his chapter on actors, Lewis adds, “I have never known a professional actor who did not re­spond to kind and fair treatment, plus a little spoon-feed­ing. Aside from being flies in amber, actors are very human.”

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